As used herein, the term “biopharmaceuticals” refers to drugs produced from biological materials. In a broader sense, the term may refer to drugs produced based on bioengineering technologies, including genetic recombination, cell fusion and cell culture, which are advanced biotechnologies. Such biopharmaceuticals are classified into protein drugs, therapeutic antibodies, vaccine, gene therapy agents and cell therapy agents.
Recently, most recombinant proteins have been produced either using eukaryotic host cells such as animal cells or insect cells, or by microorganisms such as yeast or bacteria. However, the culture of such animal cells has shortcomings in that media are costly, the possibility of contamination with viruses capable of infecting humans is high, and a separate purification process for removing bovine serum-derived proteins that may be introduced is required (Huang and McDonald 2009).
For this reason, plant cell culture has recently received attention as an alternative system for production of recombinant proteins. Plant cells are regarded as a safe production system, because these plant cells are not infected with a virus or pathogen of animal origin and there is no possibility of incorporation of a material of animal origin.
However, plant cell culture shows relatively low protein expression levels and slow growth rates compared to the culture of other host cells, including animal cells. Thus, for the commercialization of plant-derived biopharmaceuticals, the development of new systems of producing recombinant proteins by culture of new plant cells has been requested.
The information disclosed in the Background Art section is only for the enhancement of understanding of the background of the present invention, and therefore may not contain information that forms a prior art that would already be known to a person of ordinary skill in the art.